Archive for August, 2012

Today, I learned, … while I was writing a blog-post .. that former astronaut Neil Armstrong had passed away. The news hit me with a bit of a shock. I know he was old, but I was surprised to learn that he had heart surgery, the complication of which got to him in the end.

He will be mourned by his families and friends; he will be mourned by his nation; he will be mourned by the people of the world; he will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send one of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in his death, he binds more tightly the brotherhood of man. In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But he was the first, and he will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.
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The above reworking posted by Rastair on Reddit. The speech was originally written by William Safire for President Nixon in case Apollo 11 couldn’t make it back from the moon. Rastair changed the plurals into the singulars for the occasion.

While I have never seen the moon-landing, as that is well before my time. I have seen of course the replays and am aware of the history surrounding the moon landings, something which has always fascinated me. I find it difficult to write about what exactly inspired me about it, but in no doubt it helped me fuel my lust for science and general geekery.

But the legendary trip to the moon is known to anyone and everyone. It’s been broadcast and show and shown before. And who doesn’t know the famous words he spoke ..

One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind

And with those words, in my view, he transcended above a man of a nationality and became a man of our world, or our planet, and in that, the world should mourn him. Personally speaking, I have poured myself a nice dram of my favourite Scotch whisky and went to sit outside and looked up at the sky and toasted to him, the worlds first astronaut that stood on the moon.

Mr Neil Armstrong, where ever you are .. thank you for your courage and inspiration. I leave you with this wish:

May you return to be between the stars .. to where once you travelled..

Quite often, you see people who are new to Second Life and who signed up solely for the BDSM to enter a bdsm sim or parcel and start immediately talking about wanting to “be owned” or “looking for a slave”. And I decided to write about that this week.

While there is absolutely nothing wrong with being owned for wanting to have a submissive or a slave, after all it would be rather hypocritical of me considering that I have been wonderfully owned for pretty much nearly three years now and the fact that I signed up to explore BDSM in a three dimensional immersive virtual environment, I often feel that these people consider their goal to be the be all and end all of their search.

Let alone that they see no need to develop themselves as a character or invest time and money into their looks as if to say “once I have surpassed this goal, everything else will fall right into place”. This however is a fallacy of the highest order.

Allow me in this blog-post at least try to dispel some of the myths and perhaps even impart some advice.(more…)

As promised, I would write something about building and my other plot. After a long while I have decided to clean up the mess that was left over from the previous builds. The place looked messy after all. I know at least one person had offered to buy a bulldozer of the Second Life Marketplace and to clear the whole lot. But I won’t name names, that would not be fair to Mara.

However, a couple of weeks ago I was browsing marketplace and hopping around in Second Life looking at prefabs and I came across a sim called “{What Next} and to my delight I found a perfect little cottage. Nothing big, but suitably cute. With an upstairs open plan bedroom and side kitchen. Needless to say I fell in love with it. Right there and then.,

After asking Mistress if I could buy it and getting the go-ahead, I finally bought it and so started the long awaited phase of rebuilding my sky-plot. It’s going to be a pretty overhaul as I am basically scrapping a lot of the old build off and rebuilding or perhaps redecorating from scratch.

Once during a discussion group in Second Life, someone remarked that D/s within Second Life, is much like having a girlfriend with kinky benefits, I assume that he meant mostly the bedroom equivalent of slap and tickle. I decided at the time to hold my tongue but on a certain level the comment always really vexed me. It’s something that I really disagree with. And it is an attitude that is prevalent throughout the entire D/s scene from within all levels.

It’s a strange idea on the one hand, and perhaps oh so human on the other hand, that we think that what we do is automatically better from our point of view than what anybody else is doing. And it seems that these levels look up and/or down on each other. So why do I think that this attitude is misplaced and it is something that is far more damaging to our wonderful scene rather than promoting our open mindedness for which we are priding ourselves?

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Quote of the Moment:

"There are two kinds of strengths: the strength to lead, and the strength to follow; the strength to control, and the strength yield. There are two kinds of power: the power to strip away another's soul bare, and the power to stand naked."